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Memory Alpha talk:Category tree
This talk-page is for discussing single categories, and for general discussion on the categories. For the original category tree suggestions, see Memory Alpha talk:Category tree/Tree_suggestions. Single categories List categories with existing "List of ..." article Suggesting whole category trees obviously leads to lengthy discussions. This is a necessary process, of course, but to get things started another parallel approach might be useful. My suggestion is the following: If a "List of X" already exists, and if this list is unannotated (just links to articles, no additional text for each entry, no pairs of links, etc.), then suggest the most generic form of this list as a new category below (for example, don't suggest "24th century starfleet personnel" or "inhabited planets" yet, just "starfleet personnel" (or "personnel"?) or "planets". You might want to add your opinion about possible sub- and super-categories, but those comments shouldn't be considered mandatory or obligatory yet. Each editor may vote on that suggestion: *'Agree' - No further comments necessary *'Disagree' - only if the suggested category violates the rules stated above or you want to suggest a better name, please comment on your reasons If, at least 5 days after your initial suggestion, there are no unresolved disagreements and at least one agreement, you may create the suggested category. For the moment, don't delete the original "List of X" article - this can be done later. -- Cid Highwind 23:08, 22 Dec 2004 (CET) Vote on this procedure Please sign in the appropriate subsection if you agree or disagree. If you disagree, give a reason. If, after 5 days, there's no unresolved disagreement and at least three people agree, this procedure should be considered accepted. :Procedure accepted after 5 days. -- Cid Highwind 00:21, 2004 Dec 28 (CET) Agree * Cid Highwind 23:08, 22 Dec 2004 (CET) * Mike, Kobi and EtaPiscium already supported some of the categories suggested below - I'd like to count that as an implicit agreement to this suggestion to get things started. Let me know if this is incorrect. -- Cid Highwind 12:32, 2004 Dec 26 (CET) Disagree category:Species Possible subs: sentient species, non-sentient, etc.. -- Redge | ''Talk'' 22:01, 27 Dec 2004 (CET) :I would suggest life-forms instead, since "species" is a rather specific biological term. I agree with the split into "sentient" and "non-sentient", and then the subgroups that have already been established for those two. -- EtaPiscium 00:29, 28 Dec 2004 (CET) ::Life-forms might be a rather inclusive topic. I'd like to see a bit finer granularity. But I do agree that 'life-form' is a better choice than 'species'. Inasmuch as there's no list right now, I'd recommend deferring this category until some of the list based ones are up and running, and we have some experience to build on. -- Balok 02:02, 28 Dec 2004 (CET) :Which existing "List of ..." article should be the basis of this category? Please link to it in your suggestion, as explained above. Otherwise, please move your suggestion to another section. Thanks. (Clarification: I '''disagree' with this suggestion for technical purposes. I tried to define a relatively strict procedure with a narrow focus to allow the "least controversial" list categories to pass quickly. For this suggestion to belong in this section (instead of "Category tree suggestions", for example) a generic "List of species" should exist, which IMO is not the case.) -- Cid Highwind 00:41, 2004 Dec 28 (CET) ::Oh, in that case I think it's premature to create this category, since it doesn't correspond to any current list. -- EtaPiscium 00:52, 28 Dec 2004 (CET) ::There are the "List of X Quadrant species" articles, but I agree that these aren't the easiest lists. I also vote premature. -- Harry 16:58, 2 Jan 2005 (CET) Other single category suggestions Category:Episodes For all episodes of any series. Decision as to placing movies here or do the ten films deserve to be considered as episodes. Possible subs would be by series. -- Captain Mike K. Bartel 17:06, 2 Jan 2005 (CET) :I don't see this as terribly useful. This is a case where I think we're better served by existing structures: the series and season pages. -- Steve 17:59, 2 Jan 2005 (CET) :I partly agree with Steve - one category for ''all episodes wouldn't be too useful in my opinion - I wouldn't object to Category:TOS episodes etc. though. In that case Category:Episodes could later be created as a supercategory for those 6 categories. Movies should have their own category, Category:Movies. -- Cid Highwind 19:57, 2005 Jan 2 (CET) :This category should contain five more categories: Category:Episode (TOS), Category:Episode (TNG), Category:Episode (DS9), Category:Episode (VOY) and Category:Episode (ENT); however no episode of any series should be placed within the supercategorie, it is simply not practically. -- Kobi 20:06, 2 Jan 2005 (CET) So are the following acceptable: *Category:TOS episodes *Category:TAS episodes *Category:TNG episodes *Category:DS9 episodes *Category:VGR episodes *Category:ENT episodes *Category:Movies ? -- Captain Mike K. Bartel 21:57, 2 Jan 2005 (CET) :Support - The series and season pages list the episodes according to those criteria. Someone looking by title would have more work to do, especially for the series that went seven seasons. A category for each series, with alphabetic order by title would get my vote. -- Balok 02:32, 3 Jan 2005 (CET) ::I moved this suggestion to a separate subsection, because it is a "bigger" suggestion somehow. Generally, I agree with this categorization - an alphabetical list of all episodes in one series, no categories for specific seasons, no episodes appearing in the supercategory "Episodes". I strongly object to "VGR episodes", though. We had this discussion before, it should be Category:VOY episodes. -- Cid Highwind 12:10, 2005 Jan 3 (CET) :::Agreed. "VOY" is the generally accepted abbreviation. -- Balok 19:15, 3 Jan 2005 (CET) ::::Generally accepted even though we have no VOY Season 7 but VGR Season 7 instead. All of our Voyager pages use VGR (List of VGR recurring character appearances, etc.) with the sole exception of the VOY and two other redirects using VOY. -- Captain Mike K. Bartel 20:42, 3 Jan 2005 (CET) :::::VOY seems to be what they use in the directory structure over at http://www.startrek.com, for whatever that's worth... -- Balok 21:22, 3 Jan 2005 (CET) :::::This should probably be discussed somewhere else, but anyway: "Generally accepted" because not only the official Star Trek website startrek.com, but the majority of fans worldwide uses VOY, not VGR. Try googling for ("VGR" "Star Trek") and ("VOY" "Star Trek") - less than 10,000 hits using the first string, but over 180,000 using the second. Even on this site, the abbreviation VOY is used about as much as the abbreviation VGR - try "What links here" on both redirect pages. We should definitely have that sorted out before creating any categories using either "VOY" or "VGR"... -- Cid Highwind 21:28, 2005 Jan 3 (CET) :I agree that seasons are an abstract and essentially meaningless subdivision. But I don't know if I like alphabetical order. What about a sort key representing the correct order of episodes? Alternatively, I'd like to keep the lists of episodes per series in the series article, next to the category. Because I like to keep lists of episodes in airing order somewhere. -- Harry 13:10, 3 Jan 2005 (CET) ::I think this is the kind of thing best handled by a list, because I feel the alphabetic ordering of category keys will produce a bizarre looking page. Category pages seem structured to order keys alphabetically. A date based key work create some sort of numeric ordering, and not a particularly pretty one; you'd have to use an easily and correctly sorted format like '19670107' (January 7, 1967) to ensure a valid sort. Unless there are special date handling category tools I know nothing about. -- Balok 19:15, 3 Jan 2005 (CET) ::Yes, airing order should be kept somewhere, but it doesn't make any sense to have the category entries sorted by airdate, because the sort key itself doesn't appear in the listing. Besides, we already have complete and final lists sorted that way, so the categories would be completely redundant that way... -- Cid Highwind 13:19, 2005 Jan 3 (CET) :::Sorting by airdates is kinda silly.. I still don't understand, with the exception of Unification and Skin of Evil, why anyone would think the order that NBC or Viacom chose the episodes for airing has any kind of relevance superior to the chronological order of eps or production order -- Captain Mike K. Bartel 20:42, 3 Jan 2005 (CET) ::::There are already three pages that sort the episodes in production order, so these should be used for alphabetical sorting. Furthermore I object the creation of "VGR Episodes", because then it would need to be "EPR Episodes" as well. Also I still think you should go with the namingconventiones and name these "Category:Episode (SER)" (using singular version and Series Tag after) -- Kobi 21:23, 3 Jan 2005 (CET) ::I referred to "airdate order" above, but my point isn't to discuss "airdate" vs. "production" or "stardate" order - it's any chronological order vs. alphabetical order. Categories are sorted alphabetically by default and without any good possibility to change it. Sort keys can be used for minor corrections (for example using "Defector, The" to avoid having half of all episodes listed at 'T'), but not to chronologically list 180 entries. -- Cid Highwind 21:03, 2005 Jan 4 (CET) So what are the specific advantages or disadvantages to Category:VOY episodes compared to Category:Episodes (VOY)? or furthermore, what qualifiers are we using to decide singular vs plural, (Category:Episode (VOY)) and how is it advantageous to not use a unified singular or plural scheme? -- Captain Mike K. Bartel 16:06, 6 Jan 2005 (CET) :Category:X (singular) for "articles related to X"; Category:Xs (plural) for a "List of X", if we're following Wikipedias scheme. In this case, it should be "Episodes". One advantage of "Episodes (VOY)" compared to "VOY Episodes" is that the former follows accepted naming conventions ("(VOY)" being a qualifier for "episodes", similar to the qualifiers used on our disambiguation pages) while the latter could be considered a non-standard abbreviation of the more correct title "Star Trek Voyager episodes"... -- Cid Highwind 17:58, 2005 Jan 6 (CET) ::Well if there's ever a category or supercategory "TOS" then in a list, undercategories "TOS episodes" and "TOS whatevers" would all fall nicely under it. I can't see any difference why it would matter either way, but which is the preferred method? I'd like to reach a consensus: I put forward the "TOS episodes" suggestion, but does anyone else support that in favor of the one objection to make the disambiguated version ("Episodes (TOS)").. please support one so we can get started. -- Captain Mike K. Bartel 17:39, 9 Jan 2005 (CET) :::I thought about it for quite some time - I guess I prefer "Episodes (TOS)", although I could live with "TOS Episodes" as well, should the majority prefer that one. -- Cid Highwind 09:39, 2005 Jan 13 (CET) Category:Weapons I think it could be a good idea to include a reference page with links to all the weapons articles. With this, if someone wanted to compare the types of weapons from two different species, it would be simple, especially if the person didn't know what types of weapons to look for. zsingaya 19:03, 14 Jan 2005 (CET) * Support, although might be renamed to Military technology, and based on List of military technology. The subdivisions in that article might then evolve into subcategories. -- Harry 19:57, 14 Jan 2005 (CET) *I like the idea. I'm not completely convinced of the category title/content, though. Should this be a category for all weapons, or only hand-held weapons (I think those deserve an own category)? I think we shouldn't create a category for all "military technology" at the moment - I don't like the idea of mixing not only different types of weapons, but also weapon-related hardware, defensive systems and those listed as "unconventional weapons". -- Cid Highwind 12:24, 2005 Jan 17 (CET) Accepted categories These categories have been accepted. Discussion&vote were moved to their talk pages. *Category:Planets *Category:Sectors *Category:Nebulae *Category:Moons *Category:Clusters *Category:Delphic Expanse *Category:Titles *Category:Mirror universe Maintenance categories Category:Memory Alpha featured articles We can use categories to help with the regular maintenance task of listing specific articles somewhere ("attention needed", "featured article" etc.) by creating a category and adding it to the relevant template. To test if this is a viable option, I would like to create Category:Memory Alpha featured articles to list featured articles - the page Memory Alpha:Featured Articles basically is an unannotated list. Any opinions/objections? -- Cid Highwind 14:26, 2005 Jan 2 (CET) :The problem with this is, that you would need to edit all the existing pages. When we created de:Kategorie:Stub by putting it into the message template, not one page appeared in there. They all needed to be edited at least one time. -- Kobi 14:33, 2 Jan 2005 (CET) ::I read about that problem on Wikipedia, but I think we would only have to do this once, to get started. Right? -- Cid Highwind 15:04, 2005 Jan 2 (CET) :::Unless (though I may be mistaking) we add Category:Memory Alpha featured articles to . That should work, shouldn't it? -- Redge | ''Talk'' 14:01, 14 Jan 2005 (CET) ::::Well, this is what I suggested... ;) The problem Kobi mentioned is the fact that pages containing that template don't get updated automatically - we would have to make a "fake" edit to each one of the articles. This is just a minor issue, and would have to be done only once, though. -- Cid Highwind 14:11, 2005 Jan 14 (CET) :::::I SUPPORT THIS PROCEDURE -- Captain Mike K. Bartel OK, I created the category page and added the category link to the template - please don't edit all "featured" articles to include them at the moment... QUESTION: Obviously, the article Template:Featured gets included in this list. Can we live with this, or should we abort? :) -- Cid Highwind 22:12, 2005 Jan 16 (CET) :Looks like it would work okay, but I think it would be just as easy to add the category link to each article. It would take time, but would be worth the effort. I also have a question about alphabetizing; it's my understanding that the category link can be formatted so it will be sorted differently on the category page; placing Crusher, Beverly on Beverly Crusher would make that article appear under "C" rather than "B." If we simply add the category link to the template, wouldn't it alphabetize all articles by the first letter, leaving characters alphabetized by first name and all Starfleet ships under "U"? Or does this not really make a difference? -- SmokeDetector47 08:10, 2005 Jan 17 (CET) ::Correct, a category link can be formatted that way. Also correct, using this form of "automatic categorization", we wouldn't be able to use the sorting rules we normally use. All this could be solved by adding the category link manually, but one goal of this suggestion was to make the "message&linklist" system we have as easy as possible, which wouldn't be the case if we had to add a category manually. The question is, what's more important - just having to add one template to one page, or having a "better" sorting on the resulting category page. I personally think it's the former in this case... -- Cid Highwind 12:12, 2005 Jan 17 (CET) Category:Orphaned categories I created this category as a maintenance tool. All categories that are "accepted" but aren't part of a bigger tree yet should be categorized here for the moment, then removed later. -- Cid Highwind 01:28, 2005 Jan 2 (CET) General discussion This is taking forever This is taking forever. The current (IMO logical) suggestions can be made in a preliminary catergory tree, so we can get underway categoring (or whatever the word is) all pages. besides, even if we make one mistake, we can allways edit. Nothing's written in stone. We should get started. -- Redge | ''Talk'' 16:20, 13 Sep 2004 (CEST) I've created a preliminary version in the main article. This should serve to clarify this discussion and help draw out more discussion so this proces will be finished this century. -- Redge | ''Talk'' 15:55, 1 Oct 2004 (CEST) :I moved your suggestion to this page instead. IMO, the article itself should be reserved for the final version to avoid confusion. -- Cid Highwind 16:02, 1 Oct 2004 (CEST) Fundamental Categories So, first things first, then. What should the fundamental categories (those at the top (or bottom, depending on how you view it) of the tree) be? I think they should follow the same setup as the current Main Page divisions: *'People' *'Society and Culture' *'Science and Technology' *'Space Travel and Hardware' *'Around the Universe' (this would include the Timeline) *'Meta-Trek' (this can encompass Episodes and Movies, Other Sources, and the Production Crew section of People) This would only leave Reference Tables uncovered - that should get a category of its own, but not a fundamental one. I was aiming for something snappier, like "People, Places, Races, Ships"... but it wasn't 'inclusive' enough. :D -- Michael Warren | ''Talk'' 03:00, Sep 3, 2004 (CEST) : That looks good to start with, Michael. I would suggest calling the last one Production Information. I've never liked the term "Meta-Trek", to be honest. : Something that's important to mention is that articles are allowed to be included in multiple categories. Therefore, an article for Captain Sisko might be listed in Category:Main character and Category:Starfleet officer. : I'd also suggest we have a single overriding category for "Episode" and a single overriding category for "Timeline". For the former, it might make sense to break them down by series, but we've already got a full listing of the series links thanks to the browser bar that's part of each episode page's template. : So, here's my fleshed-out idea for the starting category tree: * People ** Main Characters ** Recurring Characters ** Guest Characters ** Starfleet Officers ** ... * Society and Culture * Science and Technology (includes "hardware") * Space Travel ** Starships ** Shuttlecraft * Around the Universe * Production Information ** Actors and Actresses ** Writers and Staff ** Directors : I think that's about all for now. I'm sure I'll think of more ideas later on, of course... ;-) -- Dan Carlson | Talk 15:45, Sep 3, 2004 (CEST) ::Yeah, as I say, it makes sense to follow the setup we have arranged on the Main Page at the moment, then filtering down into the subsections that have been set up in the same manner - that way we keep the same 'directory tree' that has already been established, allowing an easy replacement system as the categories roll out. ::As for the episodes, I still think we should link them into the background area, divide by series then season. A single category would get rapidly overpopulated (of course, like the series/season pages at the moment, each episode can be categorised in both). -- Michael Warren | ''Talk'' 17:06, Sep 3, 2004 (CEST) The simplest (and perhaps best) way, would be to create as head categories People, Around the Universe etc.., make Main Characters, Starships etc.. subcategories, and create seperate subcategories in those for each series: Category:TOS Recurring characters, sub of Recurring Characters, sub of People. The easiest way to get this started would be to simply go to the main page and replace People with Category:People, and fan out from that. -- Redge | ''Talk'' 16:48, 3 Sep 2004 (CEST) :Which is what has already been suggested. Except that categories are not yet enabled. Replacing the Main Page classification now would a) be futile and b) risk losing the data we have already by cutting the pages adrift. Populate the categories first, then, once that is done to a sufficiently acceptable state, we can replace the standard headings. Don't start jumping the gun. The standard system has served us well so far. -- Michael Warren | ''Talk'' 16:57, Sep 3, 2004 (CEST) I would take what you have suggested and modify it slightly: *Characters (would you think of all Xindi as "people"?) *Society and culture *Science and technology (incl. "space travel") *Around the universe *Production information *Reference *Memory Alpha (include community and fan stuff) I think "Characters" might be preferred if the "Production information" is kept in its own section. Also, I would think the space ships are considered "technology" for the purpose of classification. —Mike 09:22, Sep 30, 2004 (CEST) :I don't know if a simple top-down approach is enough to get things going in this case. Perhaps we should collect all possible category suggestions in a "wishlist" and create a structure later? -- Cid Highwind 11:00, 1 Oct 2004 (CEST) :::Well, I think that "beings" is preferable to "people" or "characters" then, but I like "characters" the least. I know that "locations" are still being discussed, but would there be any problems with starting to add category elements to technology and starships, and then use the categories special page to tweak the structure as it gets added to? There hasnt been any work on suggestions for categories in two months, maybe pushing forward and starting might give us momentum to get the larger structure organized? -- Captain Mike K. Bartel 18:47, 7 Dec 2004 (CET) :::: I strongly recommend to restrict it to a field test first, when we introduced the categories in MA/de we noticed quite a lot do not make sense and must be moved. Also on a side notice, when looking at the suggested categories I saw they are all in plural, again something which makes no sense. -- Kobi 19:18, 7 Dec 2004 (CET) Singular vs. Plural category titles Copied from somewhere else on this page: :Wikipedia uses both singular (to list "topics relating to", similar to "see also" sections) and plural category titles (to list "instances of", a.k.a. "list categories") - in our case "Planets" would be a list of all planets (but nothing else), while "Planet" could contain articles like planetary classification (but probably wouldn't link to each and every planet). We may choose a different naming convention, of course, but I think it makes sense if we are allowing "list categories" to exist. -- Cid Highwind 20:26, 2004 Dec 25 (CET) We should come to an agreement here, soon - preferably before the first single categories suggested above are created. I like the convention of having plural titles for lists and singular titles for "related topics" and would like to see this implemented on MA as well. Does someone disagree? -- Cid Highwind 20:28, 2004 Dec 28 (CET) :I don't. I also agree that we should 'get a move on'. I haven't been participating in much of these discussions (I still had DNS troubles at the time). I think we need one big final election in the near future, and stick to it. I think we just have to come to some form of compromise. -- Harry 14:08, 30 Dec 2004 (CET) ::I don't think "one big final election" is appropriate regarding categories (or even possible - we don't even know which general structure should be the result; it surely isn't a single tree, for example). By making one small step at a time, a consensus seems to be much easier to achieve. We can also use those first categories to test the usefulness of further categories or category structures. ::Regarding the original topic: Any further comments regarding plural categories? Anyone? :) -- Cid Highwind 14:48, 2004 Dec 30 (CET) Reminder - no new categories, please I will answer to the discussion above later (when I have the time), but meanwhile... Could you please stop creating new categories and adding too many articles to the already existing ones? This discussion was started explicitly to come to an agreement before categories are created - let's just keep that in mind. The existing ones (Performers,TOS performers, TS1P, TS2P, TS3P) should be enough for testing purposes, and I also see some minor problems with them already. Thanks. -- Cid Highwind 09:47, 21 Dec 2004 (CET) :Categories appear to require a level of user consensus that seems unlikely to occur. I have come to wonder if they're even a good idea... -- Balok 00:36, 22 Dec 2004 (CET) Do we need to break this page up? MediaWiki warned me about editing this page; that some browsers might have trouble because it is so large. I have had no difficulty (using Firefox 1.0), but it would be a shame to lock someone out inadvertently. -- Balok 02:02, 28 Dec 2004 (CET) :The page is quite large, but all different sections are still active, so I see no easy way to archive some of the content at the moment. I also think that most modern browsers are able to handle this page size, and "section editing" (is that feature activated by default, I don't know?) should solve the problem for anyone else. Some of the content should be archived later, of course. -- Cid Highwind 20:21, 2004 Dec 28 (CET) :Perhaps the sections could be moved to subpages? Dma 02:18, 2 Jan 2005 (CET) :Section editing was not enabled for me, so I'm going to guess it's not enabled by default. If you want to edit by section and it's not enabled (you don't see little 'Edit' links to the right of each heading level), then go to the 'Misc settings' page on your preferences. It should be obvious which box to check. -- Balok 01:32, 6 Jan 2005 (CET) :Since the single category voting mechanism is used more often now, I've moved the large tree-suggestion section to Memory Alpha talk:Category tree/Tree suggestions, and moved the voting section to the top. It should make it easier to find for Archivists. I really like this voting scheme, so perhaps we can make a dedicated page for it? Something like Memory Alpha:Votes for Categories? -- Harry 20:08, 14 Jan 2005 (CET)